At launch, we have 23 free titles in the store, ranging from utilities like LibreOffice and Asterisk to classic games like Freeciv and OpenTTD and Raspberry Pi exclusive Iridium Rising. We also have one piece of commercial content: the excellent Storm in a Teacup from Cobra Mobile.

The commercial aspect of the store might provide some motivation for younger programmers. Eben Upton, the founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, had this to say about it in an interview on IT PRO:

It’s also a way for kids to develop programs, share them and potentially make some money. It’s hard to tell a child to study hard and that they’ll make a lot of money in their twenties. It’s easier to say study hard because you can make a bit of money today.

Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based creative technologist and Contributing Editor at MAKE. He’s the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and the author of Getting Started with BeagleBone.